The marathon pre-22

Written by Nasser Kandil,

On the twenty-second of November the Lebanese people are preparing themselves for the new government, and on the twenty-second of January next year, which means after two months and a half the Americans are preparing themselves for the new president. So in the local and regional arenas there are Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, and Yemeni marathons. All the Lebanese people are eager to see a prompt birth of the first government of the era and are expecting spending the accumulative positive balance in favor of this birth, but in the Lebanese marathon this desire is competing with the reverse demands which express the different understanding of the government and its role and the disparate interests of the forces which accompany the process of the new era. Quickly Hezbollah and the Lebanese Forces become the two sides of the confrontation in the nature of the governmental choice, so the fate of the marathon depends on what will be decided by the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister.  Therefore will the government emerge before the Independence Day or maybe after the second entitlement on the twenty- second of January in compliance with the Saudi advices regarding who is associated with it through the considerations of the region, to withstand and to be content with what they have presented of concessions to enhance their steadfastness till the new president assumes power in the White House, whether Hillary Clinton who is closer to Saudi Arabia than Barack Obama and his team and who will change the regional policies, or  Donald Trump and the Republicans, where Saudi Arabia will be able to reform the lobby which supports the steadfastness against Russia and Iran and their allies in the Middle East, it is a Saudi Israeli lobby that has been formed on the basis of the war in Syria.

The Head of the Lebanese Forces Party proposed a government in which it excludes the block of the Deputy Suleiman Franjieh, the Syrian Social National Party and the Phalanges Party, and  which it is replaced by a tripartite sharing by the Free Patriotic Movement , the Lebanese Forces and Al Mustaqbal Movement of the Christian seats in the government, while Hezbollah and the Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri support strongly the call for adopting the positions of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister of forming a government of a national unity by including representatives of the three parties, and distinguishing the Deputy Franjieh of an importance portfolio  preferably a sovereign one. It is known that what will be applied on the Christian seats will be applied on the Islamic seats, when Franjieh is excluded, the talk becomes about a government of twenty-four ministers, thus the representation of the Deputy Talal Arslan and the Former Minister Faisal Karami will be out. The conflict here is not only a conflict of political quotas and interests but if it is like that according to the Forces in order to enlarge its share then it is a political one too by approaching the Forces a government in which it is easy to form a tired atmosphere for the President of the Republic that make him associated with the understanding between the Forces and Al Mustaqbal Movement as two allies and in which his alliance will be caught through its relation with Hezbollah, so the tension will raise between the President of the Republic and the House of the Representatives, but according to Hezbollah and the Speaker Berri there is no additional share that they get from expanding the base of representation, because the matter is pure politics by granting the new era an opportunity for launching comfortably and forming a popular and political basis free of tensions before the elections as well as creating a smooth background for the parliamentary elections and discussing its law, furthermore, enabling the President of the Republic from moving among the diversity of the colors in the government. Because this will allow of forming flexible and variable alliances according to the change of the issue. Despite the clarity of the image of the interests of each of the President of the Republic and the Prime Minister through the positive interaction with the call of Berri and Hezbollah especially regarding the electoral outcome of this call on them, the complexity remains in the postponement of the birth of the new government after the Saudi waiting for after taking over the responsibility of the authority by the new US President. The matter depends on the choice of the Prime Minister to do what he is convinced of its righteousness in its time or to wait as what has happened in his presidential choice. The waiting makes the government which was made in Lebanon to be made by the outside practically as the presidency.

In the regional scene the marathons from Syria to Yemen to Iraq become clear by resolving the matters before the starting of the mandate of the new US President, and it seems that the US administration which its mandate will end is involved in this marathon for the last day in the office, through which the President Barack Obama will withdraw the last US troops from Afghanistan achieving his electoral promise of the withdrawal from the two wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the different return to Iraq and to some areas of Syria under the title the war on terrorism, which seems that it will be clear at the end of Obama administration according to the lines of the Russian US understanding, under the decline of the debate about Aleppo and the US recognition of the failure in the meetings of the experts which were held in Geneva with Saudi Qatari Turkish partnership, and which did not succeed in separating between Al Nusra and the armed fictions according to the US pledge to Moscow, while Moscow and the allies are preparing themselves to resolve the battle of Aleppo and the return to the terms of the understanding in cooperation in the wars of Raqqa and Idlib, where the presence of Al Nusra and ISIS, while America started on the eve of the presidential elections to agitate the front of Al Raqqa waiting for the Russian joining after resolving Aleppo.

In the war of Iraq America was reassured regarding the inability of Peshmerga and the Kurdish formations of playing a resolving role in the war on ISIS, the fact of the Turkish manipulation but for other goals, and the reality of that the popular crowd has formed the additional value in this war which America needs through achievements that do not end it, where ISIS comes out of the courses of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers where the big cities to the  Mesopotamia, where the negotiations have not finished yet, their center is oil and the security relations between the Syrian and the Iraqi governments followed by negotiations with Iran and Russia instead of the negotiations which proceeded the withdrawal from Afghanistan about the Silk Road which was blocked due to the presence of ISIS in the areas which link Syria with Iraq from Al Kaem to Tal Afar to Hasaka, so the presence of ISIS prevents the smooth connection  between Iran , Syria, and the resistance by land, and thus the connection by land between Russia and China across Iran with the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

In Yemen the war ends the political choices and the war of attrition remains endless, but there was an endeavor to end it through the initiative prepared by the US Secretary of State John Kerry and which has got the consensus of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries. The essence of this initiative met the most important demand of the alliance of Ansar Allah and the Yemeni Poplar Conference. However the negotiation revolves around what is similar to the negotiation that preceded the Lebanese presidency, where the recognition of the settlement paves the way for the presidency and the government, and as Syria the negotiation is revolving from under the table around US oil and security privileges from Bab Al Mandab to Al Hodeidah. It seems that the date of taking over the responsibility of the authority by the new US President is the ceiling of the possible waiting to stabilize the settlement’s rules and their launching along with Saudi certainty that nothing will change with the arrival of the new US President.

What is left is what Turkey which lives outside the history and the geography is doing, it retreats of the war of Mosul talking a lot about Tal Afar, while the popular crowd is progressing toward it, Turkey keeps silent about Aleppo due to the inability, it almost announces the progress toward Al- Bab city till it hears the Syrian critical position of confronting any violation in the air or on the land, it stands at thirteen kilometers from the city of Al Bab after the Syrian army and the allies have become at a distance of five kilometers of it.

The marathons of the New Middle East have devoted the equations of the six- years of wars, and reform a new geostrategic background in the most important region in the world.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

،